What fees are involved in publishing an android app?

views:

108

answers:

+4 Q:

What fees are involved in publishing an android app?

Hey all.

Im tossing up at the moment whether or not to start developing for iPhone or Android. The main thing drawing me towards Android at the moment is that apps are developed using Java, which I like, as opposed to Objective-C, which I hate.

Really though, the next thing on my list is to consider the costs. Apple requires you to join their iPhone developer program for $99/year, plus yield 30% of each sale of your app to Apple.

I noticed that google charges $25 to register as a developer. I wanted to confirm firstly, is that $25 recurring or is it just one off? Second, are there commisions charged when our apps are purchased, or do we recieve the whole sale price?

I also wanted to ask, does google provide an Android emulator that we can use to test applications without actually copying them over to an actual Android device?

Thanks so much everyone. Cheers.

+8 A:

$25 is one off.

Google takes 30% commission.

Yes, there's an emulator with the Android SDK.

You also can consider http://www.deviceanywhere.com/ for testing on multiple devices if you don't have many different devices and if testing on a real device is crucial for your app.

Mathias Lin 2010-10-28 22:46:20

Got in as I was typing. +1 winner =D

krio 2010-10-28 22:48:25

Plus of course you don't have to buy a Mac to qualify for the privilege of developing for their platform. :-)

bobince 2010-10-28 22:51:04

And you don't have to sell your apps on the android market, you can put them up for download on your webpage and sell them via paypall or whatever

Falmarri 2010-10-28 23:35:59

Thanks everyone for your replies.Falmarri, does that mean that with Android, you're aple to manually install apps without downloading them from the Android Market? Just like copying a .jar to the device and executing it?

Jason Sultana 2010-10-29 00:20:46

@Jason Sultana - yes, you could just download the .apk file from anywhere and execute it on your Android phone

SteD 2010-10-29 01:46:01

@Jason Sultana there's an option in the settings "Applications > Unknown sources" - that option would need to be checked by the user in order to allow to install apk's from everywhere except the market.

Mathias Lin 2010-10-29 02:47:49

Minor correction: the carrier gets 30%, not Google.

fadden 2010-10-29 23:46:22

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

What fees are involved in publishing an android app?

related questions